A European Space Agency experiment shows that tiny eight-legged invertebrates known as "water bears" are the first known animal to survive the vacuum and radiation of space.
The hardy critters, also called tardigrades, are between 0.1 to 1.5 millimeters long and thrive in moist conditions. They can commonly be found munching on …

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I for one..

More ammo to Sir Fred Hoyle...

...who argued that life on Earth could have originated from up there, rather than down here. "Son, your great great great E234 Grandpa was a water bear. So when you next look up to the stars, think of how far he came so you could be here today..." ;-)

Wonder if

I have to wonder

who came up with this idea. Were a couple of boffins sitting in the pub (after several drinks) and one says, "Let's launch some water bears into space, expose them to hard radiation and vacuum for a while, and see what happens."? As much as I enjoy science, I cannot fathom how they think of some of their experiments.

@Kanhef

I am struggling

Rushing to meet a deadline maybe?

Did the author of this piece rush to meet a deadline and in doing so neglect checking for grammar and completeness? WTF is the following supposed to mean: "Joensson suspects even the survivors suffered DNA damage from radiation, but were able to genetic material"?

Were able to what genetic material - rematerialise, devour, mutate, fornicate with?

This is pretty much the point of the experiment by all indications, so why not read the article again before publishing to make sure that the sentence makes sense?

water bear = spore creature

wow, just wow... I reckon it would be one simple step further to theorise (or even find) that a bug like the water bear could have a slightly harder/thicker shell to shield itself against the nasty types of solar radiation described, and then voila: quite solid evidence in the effort to prove that life originated extra-terrestrially.

PETA

@Kanhef

It is not that hard to come up with an idea like this. First you need a problem: in this case radiation therapy kills some good cells as well as lots of cancer cells. Designing a gene from scratch that repairs damage to DNA in non-cancerous cells is far too much like hardwork. It is much easier to find such a gene that already exists, and adapt it to your needs.

Next you need someone with an enormous budget. NASA are a reasonable choice, but DARPA seems more appropriate. (Remember the study that involved teaching monkeys to fly by electrocuting them when they crashed, then finding the smallest dose of radiation required to make them crash?). Department of homeland security also have money, but they cannot tell the difference between junk and science, so the competition is tougher.

There is a bunch of organisms called extremophiles that can live in harsh conditions. They are the obvious choice to start looking for any unusual genes. Your next step is to expose a selection of extremophiles with your radio therapy equipment. Any that survive are good candidates for further investigation.

Unfortunately, this is not that expensive, and does not require NASA. NASA would be interested in radiation hardening their astronauts, so the idea shows promise. While we are at it, vacuum is a bit of a problem. Some extremophiles can survive at high altitude. Get out your vacuum pump and test some likely creatures. Oops - too cheap try again:

There are cosmic rays in space that we cannot make on earth. At last - an excuse big enough to involve NASA. By this time you have experience in breeding extremophiles, and with a bit of selective breeding, you have the world's biggest collection of radiation hardened vacuum resistant animals. Time to make your pitch to NASA.

Bad news - they are not entirely dim - but they have their on motives. They need some <strike>excuses</strike> experiments to justify the space station budget, so they are interested in the experiment, but not funding your new swimming pool. Not to worry though - they are interested in publicising a successful experiment. You can ride the publicity to some less frugal investors, point at the startling abilities of extrophiles, say you have NASA convinced and get that pool after all.

"But were able to genetic material"

Most interesting

I find things like this most interesting. Who decided that these poor creatures needed to be put through this kind of testing, as opposed to, oh, cockroaches come to mind.

Also, some sentences in this article jsut didn't make sense, and I am not sure if that is Austins fault or the fault of the Swedish dudes Euronglish. Things like "..., but were able to genetic material".

And finally, we have now subjected these little critters to extreme conditions, space radiation and who knows what else, and now they are breeding. Is this a good thing? Really?

@Kanhef

nothing new

Anabiosis in Tardigrada has been know for quite a while and the creature has been to open space before. Either this is a new experiment or your reporter has "discovered America".

It is an extremely interesting being. The creatures can fill their cells with trehalose, a saccharide, which conserves them like a mummy. It is known to have survived a bath in liquid helium, boiling water, anaerobic conditions, extreme radiation etc.

I hope

None escaped, if some unlucky martian happens to pass by and the little water bear ends up on his person, the martian might discover a water bear nibbling on his exterior, and once again humankind will have infected other civilisations with things they never had before :)

Are Gummy Bears...

Kanhef

Presumably, they had already noticed that Water Bears are quite resilient here on Earth (perhaps that they weren't drowning in the drinks you mention for example), so decided to volunteer them for more extreme testing outside the atmosphere.

@Kantef

From my experience of Swedes (the people, not the root vegetable) they have lots of time on their hands to mull over the complexitites of such earth shattering experiments as they seem to spend lots of time chatting, drinking coffee, eating cake and getting very, very drunk (particularly on the weekend after payday!!)

They do know...

Humans have survived exposure to hard vacuum at least twice, with the only long-term damage being to one person's eyes. The suggestion that simple organisms can survive it for longer is hardly incredible.

Well thats ok then

@ Kanhef ;-)

I think it might have been more along the lines of sitting at the pub "What creature might survive that?" "Well waterbears can survive just about every extreme the surface of the Earth can throw at them, so..."

Experiments

@Kanhef

Not so hard to fathom why this species was tested under these conditions. It makes sense that, if you're looking for an organism that can survive in space, you would start with extremophiles. The waterbear survives in some of the harshest conditions on earth so it seems a fairly good choice for this experiment.

Also, the cost of making tiny little spacesuits for waterbears would have proved cost inhibitive.

If I'd been running this experiment it wouldn't have been Tardigrades shoved out the hatch...

"One problem with radiation therapy in treating cancer today is that healthy cells are also harmed," said a Dimwitted Horse. "If we can document and show that there are special molecules involved in DNA repair in multicellular composites like Scientologists, we might be able to further the development of radiation therapy." ®

@Kanhef

Re: I have to wonder

Presumably the point was to prove that life could have potentially survived and interstellar journey on a comet or other space debris.

I was interested to hear that they’ve done this as an experiment, as I seem to remember one of my university lecturers talking about water bears and how he thought they could potentially survive in space, and that was several years ago now. Looks like he was right, although I don't believe it was his theory as such; I think it's one that has been 'floating around' for a while now (if you'll excuse the pun). :)

Wonderful news

Thankfully this experiment has now ended world hunger and disease. Crime and poverty have already ended in my part of the world the moment those waterbears were brought back into the ISS. I am hoping this experiment will lead to improved manufacture of nano technology and a clean renewable fuel source to power all factories and cars by the end of the month.